Solar cell technologies have progressed over the past several decades resulting in significant contributions to potential power sources in many different applications. Despite dramatic improvements in materials and manufacturing methods, solar cells still have efficiency limits well below theoretical efficiencies, with current conventional solar cells having maximum efficiency of around 26%. Various approaches have attempted to increase efficiencies with some success. For example, prior approaches have included light trapping structures and buried electrodes in order to minimize surface area shaded by the conductive metal grid. Other methods have included a rear contact configuration where recombination of hole-electron pairs occurs along the rear side of the cell.
However, these and other approaches still suffer from drawbacks such as mediocre efficiencies, manufacturing complexities, material costs, reliability, and radiation degradation, among others. As such, materials capable of achieving high current outputs by absorbing relatively low amounts of energy from an energy source, and which are suitable for use in practical applications continue to be sought through ongoing research and development efforts.